


Like Blood Caught Fire

by NicoNarratives



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Flash Fiction, Trigger Warning: Death, nature spirits, trigger warning: suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoNarratives/pseuds/NicoNarratives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julie's cold. Always has been. Always will be.</p><p>The short tale of snow spirit looking for warmth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Blood Caught Fire

Julie's cold. Always has been. Always will be.

So she suspects, anyway. She can't remember a time before the cold. Once she could recall the days before her death in the snow bank, alcohol tricking her warm. She'd died quickly and painlessly. Julie doesn't remember now if it'd been an accident or a suicide.

It's alright. She can think of nothing that would improve this unlife. She wanders white forests and watches wolves in their dens and pine branches heavy with snow before they snap. In the cities she watches children sledding down false hills created by plows. In store windows are televisions and she'll stand before them for hours while no one sees her. Sometimes she'll enter a store or restaurant, the heat caressing her and making something swim in her head, but people complain. Not to her, but to the owners that it's cold, so painfully cold. And Julie sees their lips turn blue and breath turn visible, and she leaves.

Even better than the televisions are the fireplaces. She's afraid of fire and fairly sure she'd melt if she touched it, but still she watches. Its ever changing shape, the way the flames dance, and how she can't look away until the last glowing ash goes dark fills her with a longing so intense she thinks it'd be better to die again than go on without it. But the fire is inside, and she is out, and so she remains.

One day she wanders into town to find it burning.

One building is an inferno, the one before it only a black skeleton, and the next only just beginning to catch. All around her are crying people with smoking clothes and gazes that pass through her.

One woman stands, not on the sidewalk like the others, but in the doorway of the engulfed house. Her skin is the color of char and when she turns to face Julie, when she meets her eyes, they prick like embers. Julie can see her veins burn red through her grey skin, as if even her blood has caught fire.

For the first time in her memory, Julie runs. They meet halfway, both hands outstretched to touch the other. They don't. They only hover, as if warming themselves before a hearth, and Julie decides she can bear to die again.

She touches the woman's cheek and heat scorches her. For a moment she's sure she's melting away, but the woman leans into her touch, and Julie is not melting.

She is warm.


End file.
